The present invention relates, generally, to the field of computing, and more particularly to server computers.
Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (hereinafter “PCI-E) is a high speed serial computer expansion bus standard. A computer or a server may include expansion or adapter slots which accept PCI-E expansion cards inserted into the expansion slots. The PCI-E interface allows high bandwidth communication between the PCI-E expansion cards and other system components, for example a motherboard, a central processing unit, and memory. Types of PCI-E expansion cards include video cards, sound cards, USB expansion cards, hard drive controller cards, adapter cards, and network interface cards. A PCI-E switch is used to interconnect the PCI-E cards in the PCI-E slots with the processor or central processing unit, and other components. In a server, the number of PCI-E slots is fixed at initialization and there is a fixed amount of resources assigned to each slot.